Thursday, April 16, 2009

Eden of the East is just sort of there.It's clearly a quality production, but Kamiyama seems to have forgotten to include a hook.Every now and then there will be something mildly attention grabbing, like the bit with the cop that just reminded me of Crank, the last thing I saw that bit used in.But most of it seems to be hellbent on being some sort of dreary romantic drama starring a sort of bland hero and a completely boring heroine, who's bashful shojotastic shtick borders on the downright irritating.Respect for Kamiyama is the inertia keeping me watching, but there are even odds I'll simply forget to look for it next week.

Omo, what exactly is wrong with expecting a show to start with its best foot forward? One of the absolute worst things about anime is the frequent, irritating refusal to just get to the interesting part. Waaaaay too many shows effectively don't even begin until episode 4, which is flat-out ridiculous.

I'm lost on the "shojotastic shtick," aside from a few SD moments in the first episode.

Sure, I hate it when the staff dick around -- or rather show that they're going to be incompetent when they get around to the purpose of the series -- but episode two pretty much sold me. Don't think anyone has gone in expecting a shojo/conspiracy hybrid, but any misgivings I had in episode one are pretty much gone.

"He might be my prince!""I'm so insecure I'm going to say something inaudibly!"Fucking romantic bullshit that would get you a punch in the jaw in real fucking life.Mind you, I am drunk and I saw Crank 2 this weekend, so take post with grain of salt.

After having watched ep 2, I am on the Cunningham side of the fence. This has some nice production values, but honestly if this were by anyone but Kamiyama I probably would not bother watching the next episode. The leads are not strong enough characters for me to enjoy watching them hang out shooting the shit... I mean, "Akira" LITERALLY doesn't have a personality. It could work as a counterpoint to the conspiracy-thriller material, but so far the screen time is tilted more the other way around. There's certainly plenty of time for that to change, but if this were by anyone but the director of Stand Alone Complex and (Seirei no) Moribito I wouldn't have any real reason to expect it to.

The weird thing about the prince comment is that I'm skeptical that the fantasy would be as much of an issue if the genders were reversed.

A memory-wiped main character without much of a personality yet isn't anything new; Kaiba sure as hell didn't suffer for it, nor did Warp, unlike Akira's charisma, have any substantial personality. Also, unlike Yuasa, Kamiyama can actually write and sustain plots.

One of my complaints so far is that the production values can actually be too spot-on. They fit the detailed setting so far, but, like in the final scene of episode one, give a sort of artificiality that IG is criticized for.

I don't want to argue about this TOO much, since I haven't really made up my mind yet (come on and wow me, Kamiyama), but.

Yes, I at least would be just as uninterested in the dialogue so far if the people speaking it were flipped.

And rattling off a list of amnesiac protagonists isn't really germane to whether or not this one is interesting. Hell, "Akira" name-checks Jason Bourne right in episode 1. That suggests that Kamiyama is aware he's on well-trodden ground. My problem is that he's spent about an hour so far without getting very far off it.

Warp worked because he spent so much time simply as an observer - and the stories he observed were fucking compelling.

I didn't really have a problem with either Eden character in the first episode, but I'd assumed they would eventually display more notes. Instead, they were exactly the same in the second episode, and it started to grate. The girl staring at her phone dejectedly doesn't really amount to anything remotely interesting, and the cheery flippance that made Akira likeable in the first episode now makes him look shallow.

Eastern Standard magazine

These are the 4 issues of the fanzine we produced a while back (2002-2004). They're rough, but they're also the foundation for a lot of what we've built since then, including this site.
Click on the issues to bring up the full reader.
Issue 1 focused on Berserk, Jin-roh, and Asian live-action movies. It also had a memorable review of Gundress.

Issue 2 was a dissection of FLCL (it explains it all, really) and the work of Taiyo Matsumoto.